


a delicate position

by arthurdentures



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Other, Post Reichenbach, Sadness, i'm terrible at tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-22
Updated: 2012-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-31 14:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthurdentures/pseuds/arthurdentures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kubler-Ross Model of Death and Dying is, according to sources, a set of five emotions the average person feels when faced with a traumatic event or catastrophic loss. (...) John Watson knows this as all medical professionals know this.  Spending numerous years in school and having an MD behind your name does nothing to spare you from the simplest and most complex array of emotions.  It does not, John learns, spare you from catastrophic loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a delicate position

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: You know the drill. No money, no infringement intended, no court cases, please. Also please forgive any errors or crass Americanisms. I hope you like it!

_The Kubler-Ross Model of Death and Dying is, according to sources, a set of five emotions the average person feels when faced with a traumatic event or catastrophic loss.  The fives stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  The emotions are not limited to or set by the standard of five emotions, and are in no chronological order, no set pattern; some can be repeated, skipped, or left to fester for days and years.  
John Watson knows this as all medical professionals know this.  Spending numerous years in school and having an MD behind your name does nothing to spare you from the simplest and most complex array of emotions.  It does not, John learns, spare you from catastrophic loss._  
  
  
*****  
  
  
 **day 1**  
  
 _denial_  
  
  
He woke up and the house was quiet. No buzzing of a fan, no bad telly blaring through the paper-thin walls. No shouting. It was kind of nice to wake up by the sun, by a biological alarm clock rather than the dull whine of a melancholy violin.  
  
He pulled himself out of bed and his head throbbed violently, his eyes nearly crossing and doubling the world inside his little room. _That biker did a number on my head._ The biker. _Oh, God._  
  
He stumbled, drunken, dreaming, his fingers dragging along the walls, outstretched and praying like he'd never needed or had to pray, a desperate plea to the flat and the world outside it, _God please don't be true_. The hallway ended and his fingers caught the empty space and so did the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them, nonsense syllables and sounds like drowning, almost gurgles as speech. He felt deflated, like the wind that swept into the room and filled his head and limbs and lungs for all this time was shut out, the window was closed. His knee caught the side of the sofa and it was an excuse to give out, to crumple the way he'd wanted to when the silence morphed from comfort to coldness. He tried not to think of coldness, of the tacky air hanging around his head, stale and dry and dead, dead, dead. Words and pictures from textbooks long since perused flashed behind his squeezed-shut eyelids and the coldness of that wrist, the stillness and the inanimate nature danced along the tips of his fingers and he grabbed his knee tighter. He felt warmth and blood and hot, flushed skin and his mind latched onto a word, a meaningless word among a pile of them and his eyelids threatened to rip from the tops and he whispered "No."  
  
His forehead throbbed painfully as he tapped it against his good knee. The bad knee ached, the ache it allowed him in mindless, sporadic doses since returning home.  
  
 _No.  
  
No.  
  
No._  
  
His central nervous system short-circuited, the synapses in his brain fired from places long-since quieted by mortar fire and enemy shelling, his bones seemed to crack and split in determination; his whole body, so unwilling to cooperate at any other time, so hesitant to breathe and run and think cohesively all at once suddenly gelled and stuck, moving languidly and in perfect time. Desperately, achingly, he grabbed hold of where this fluid, unnaturally natural change threw him to.  
  
 _No. Sherlock is not dead. I felt something. I know I did._  
  
His fingertips created false memories of a weak but steady pulse and he believed it, believed his body, had to even though it had lied before, because it wouldn't lie about this.  
  
The morning sun trickled in through the windows and the sounds of cars on the street below grew louder and felt heavy, full of bass and thudding noise, and he sat on the floor, curled against the couch and remembered he felt something, knew he felt it, and a hard determination filled his heart like water and blood and something from a needle, all at once.  
  
The sunlight caught the corner of something on the end table and flashed into his eyes and he stood, his knee tingling and his heart full of something like hope and feeling right.  
  
He waited six hours on the couch for him to walk into the flat. He left a note on the table when he went out to get some milk, _Be back in a few_ , and was unperturbed when the flat and the note were unchanged upon his arrival. He fell asleep on the couch, the remote control lodged somewhere under his thigh, and when he woke, there was a blanket over him. A sleepy, triumphant smile scraped the walls from his face.  
  
 _Not dead._  
  
  
  
  
  
 **day 17**  
  
 _bargaining_  
  
  
"You know, Molly?" he said, fidgeting with the end of a particularly temperamental slide.  
  
"No."  Her voice was tentative, cautious and delicate.  He wished she'd get mad, wished she'd kick him out of this lab and make him actually do something besides sit around on his off hours and let him babble on and on.  
  
"I'd give--"  
  
His voice gave out, sucked back inside his lungs by fear and the want to not crack.  He turned up at her, her goggles making her eyes look huge and full of wonder.  He gave her a tiny grin.  "It's nothing."  
  
 _I'd give up half the things in the flat and I'd never drink again, not even a pint on the weekends, I'd not fuss about his experiments in the fridge and I'd even stop blogging just to bring him back.  I would, I would, I would._  
  
  
  
  
  
 **day 37**  
  
 _anger_  
  
  
He waited and waited and worried and waited and gave Mrs. Hudson the rent and waited. Every click on the downstairs door perked his ears and when it was just someone for Mrs. Hudson or the piling post left just inside by a concerned citizen, he felt something white hot and acidic bubble up inside his throat.  
  
Mycroft dropped by once and neither of them spoke; John knew the hard line of back and face and shaking hand would give off the exact message he'd never meant to convey but felt anyway: Leave me alone. The few minutes they spent in each other's company were terse and pointed, jagged along the edges and spiked with the assurance that neither wanted comfort or to provide it. His visiting was strictly a formality, etiquette being one of Mycroft's _raisons d'etre_ , and he had meant neither sentimentality nor brotherhood in his visit.  
  
John felt, for the first time in seeming ages, the sense of being alone beyond his weakest, grasping control.  
  
Utterly had been a hyperbole once, he thought with a mixture of fondness and spite. Lots of words had turned out to be hyperboles before moving into 221B, like dangerous. And annoyed. And happy.  
  
He opened the door to the refrigerator and let out a howl at the sight of the decomposing head on the second shelf. His saucered eyes grabbed sight of fingers, toes, a patch of skin with some sort of tattoo on it, and a very old box of Chinese food with the fork upside down in the box, Sherlock's leftovers trademark.  
  
Something burned up inside his chest, flaring and jumping, like a small kindled fire right above his diaphragm. The tops of the flames danced and licked at his esophagus, bile and acid and the back of his tongue pushing themselves up into his mouth.  
  
He grabbed the disembodied head by the ears, ignoring the cold and pallable skin like modeling clay under his palms, ignoring the stench of God knows how old decomposing flesh, and threw it onto the kitchen floor.  
  
 _Christ,_ he thought. _That felt good_.  
  
He grabbed the fingers, the toes, the flaps of tattooed skin, flinging them all to the ground with primal, animalistic yowls, as if touching the remains scalded him, but letting go hurt more. He dumped the box of molded Chinese food onto the floor, shaking the thin, white box with an almost obsessive needing, scooting the slimy noodles and rotting chicken across the tile with his shoes, satisfied at the wet squish it all made underneath them. He tossed the box onto the counter with a flimsy fwat and grabbed a plate out of the sink.  
  
"John, what on Earth-"  
  
"Not now, Mrs. Hudson!" he shouted, slinging the cabinet door open and haphazardly pulling down plates, cups, bowls, knickknacks and sure antiquities from the most esteemed House of Holmes. Glass bounced off the floor and onto the counter tops and table, made their way past the division of kitchen and sitting room and burrowed deep into the carpet of the hallway.  
  
John's arm went limp, the plate in his hand tinking meekly against the edge of the cabinet door. "I'm, I'm sorry, Mrs. Hudson, I just-" His chest heated up again, boiling and steam and breathing through his nose, and he threw the plate with a mighty crash, which made Mrs. Hudson start with shock. "I'm pissed off! Bloody infuriated!"  
  
"I know, dear."  
  
"It's not fair! He's--he's--"  
  
"Go on and say it, then."  
  
"An insufferable, selfish, spoiled arse!" He grabbed another dish and sent it careening to the floor, the pieces bouncing sunlight around the room like stained glass. "So I'm breaking his things!"  An awkward pause. "Cos I'm angry!"  
  
He sucked in heavy breaths, his fists clenched. She smiled, unsure and trying to be understanding, not another bloody person really understood, but she tried and didn't say anything about the noise, which is what she came up for in the first place. She just smiled, reassuring and weak but well meant all the same, and disappeared back into her own flat.  
  
The glass crunched under his feet as he moved to shut the door and into the living room.  
  
He woke up some hours later, next to the bookshelf, a half-torn book of tobacco types in his outstretched hand. Mrs. Hudson was moving around quietly, her broom dragging the broken dishes across the floor in faint scratching sounds. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, his neck uncomfortably stiff, and wondered when the Hell he'd picked up sleeping at the drop of a hat. "Mrs. Hudson, I'm so sorry, let me-"  
  
"No, no, it's quite alright, dear." She dumped the multicolored dust and pieces into the bin and added, "But just this once. I'm not a housekeeper, mind."  
  
The scorching rage in the pit of his stomach was still bubbling, still alive and still active, and he gritted his teeth, the sandpaper sound setting the hairs on the back of his neck straight up. He unclenched his jaw and ran a rough hand over his face and neck. Why did I do that?  
  
He realized he'd spoken out loud when his landlady tutted and began tying up the garbage bag. He moved forward and gently wrestled it away from her grasp. "No, no, let me. I'll clean, I need-"  
  
He froze, the words _to not be angry at anyone but myself, I'm a doctor, I should have known_ , threatened to come leaking from his mouth, the overflow, too much on too little and it was all collapsing, but his anger resolved anew in his chest and John pulled in a deep and ragged breath and stood to his full height, eyes ahead, back straight. "I need to take responsibility."  
  
Mrs. Hudson nodded silently, letting the bag fall back into the bin with a weighty thud, and creeped out of the flat and back down the stairs.  
 _  
I need to take responsibility.  
  
I need to take responsibility._  
  
He cleaned the glass and the torn pages of books and hoovered and swept and washed and put away and dusted. He only left the smile face along the furthest wall, yellow and bright with knife holes for eyes, and tacked a piece of paper underneath it.  
 _  
Take responsibility._  
  
  
  
  
  
 **day 54**  
  
 _depression_  
  
  
The cell phone on his bedside table rang, the vibration sending it in a haphazard circle. He looked at it and wished his arms were long enough to turn out the light without having to move. He laid in the glow of the lamp instead, his stained with washed-thin t-shirt riding up his stomach, revealing a thinning gut and the presence of hipbones. He didn't feel like eating anymore, and even if he did, he couldn't get out of bed, let alone outside and down to Tesco's.  
  
He could hear the lamp humming with heat and electricity in the stillness of the flat. He strained to hear the tapping of computer keys, the whine of bow on violin, the click of the opening door, even. What he heard instead was his phone ring again.  
  
He turned his head slightly, the bright screen glowing. Mycroft. Calling to chat: unlikely. Calling to ask why John hadn't so much as moved in thirty-six hours, let alone gone to work and been therefore spotted by Mycroft's cameras: highly likely.  
  
Too much trouble, he decided.  
  
Lazily, almost as if it pained him to move even a fraction of a centimeter, he scooted the phone off the knight stand and it thudded to the floor, the battery popping out of the back, the noise and the backlight ceasing instantly. He stretched, grasping the ends of the pull strings in his nail-bitten fingertips, and yanked the light off. His hand flopped to the end table and he left it there, nuzzling his face against his arm.  
  
The sun came up and he hadn't slept.  
  
  
  
  
  
 **day 78**  
  
 _bargaining_  
  
  
Seven years is a long time to pass by a cathedral without wanting to go in. He'd never needed to, never wanted to, never had so much as the slightest urge to in those seven years he passed by, unnoticed by the eyes of God and everyone else. But he went in and crossed himself and kneeled before the crucifix. He closed his eyes, though he didn't know why.  
  
"God, please-" He halted, the words foreign now and the sensation alien from years of rust and disuse. He looked around at the empty pews and turned back to the cross, bowing his head again. "Yeah, thanks for all the good stuff and for Mum and Da and Harry and all that. Must get the thanks in before the favors."  
  
He cleared his throat and sighed, feeling awkward and strange, like his body had grown inside his clothes and everyone saw the pulling seams but himself. "Listen, God, I--I, uh, know I'm not really in a position to be asking for any sort of anything, let alone anything of this-of this caliber, but in for the pound as the pence, I suppose."  
  
His voice carried hollow and airy in the open cathedral, bouncing off the pews and pulpit and he thought for a split second that the acoustics alone of the place on a particularly blessed Sunday morning full of choirs could bring a more denominational man than himself to levitate. The echoing silence after the end of his words snapped him back to the reality, of curled hands and bowed head, and he soldiered on. "C-could you bring him back, please?  I know it's a big thing to ask for, I do, believe me, and I know I ask for quite an awful lot, especially when...well, you know."  
  
His voice trailed off as sounds of screaming kids, barely eighteen, baby faced and bloodied, feeble prayers all being sent to the same place, Oh God, Oh God, Don't let me die, as sounds of enemy fire and activated landmines seemed to fill between the walls. John shuddered and squeezed his eyes tight, nodding to himself. "Right. But, yes, please, God? Just one more thing for me. I won't ask again, for anything else, ever. I promise. I'll visit this place," he threw out a waving hand, indicating the cathedral. "whenever you want me to. Every Sunday, morning, noon, and night. I-I promise. Just...just please. I don't want no for an answer."  
  
He raised his head and blinked up at the crucifix, the man strung up on it staring down right into John's face. John felt a shock roll through him, almost as if the top of his head might shiver off, and he felt oddly exposed, like he was being scrutinized by some eye he couldn't see. The cathedral doors behind him clanged shut, another lost or broken soul seeking refuge in the darkest corners of this modern day sanctuary, so he gathered himself up and moved swiftly past the newcomer, not looking into his or her eyes as he passed.  
  
He pulled his coat snug around his waist and neck, turning his collar up at the light drizzle hazing over the sidewalk. With a deep breath, he stepped forward, moving slowly, and headed toward St. Bart's.  
  
The door swooshed closed behind him and the sterile smell of facts and slides and fluorescent light bulbs filled his nose and it should've made him comfortable, but he felt just as uneasy as he had in the church. He slumped onto a stool and drug his fingers across the base of a microscope, cold and unmoving, and he let out a heavy exhale.  
  
"Okay, science," he started, his hands shaking. "you yourself have never failed me. I, uh, I failed you a couple times, but you're never wrong. You're like-like water. Or something."  
  
The lab hummed around him, quiet and still without the noise of anyone working in it. His fingers traced around the base and up the arm of the microscope. He was unsure what he was supposed to say, that he was even asking the right thing. "Can you do me a-a favor, then, science? I know I already asked God, and I blew on an eyelash this morning like Harry used to do when we were kids, but I just want to cover all of my bases."  
  
Molly moved into the room, the door swooshing behind her, her face buried in a stack of files. She looked up and shook her head, surprised, a nervous smile painting her face. She jittered anxiously, a tiny ball of nervousness stretched into a lithe young woman, and John gave her a smile back without it feeling like an obligation.  
  
"You alright, Dr. Watson?"  
  
"Fine, Molly," he said, feigning giddy exasperation. "Just...talking, I suppose."  
  
She paused, her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip, her eyes smiling, always smiling, and she nodded shortly. "Well, if you, uh-"  
  
"Thanks."  
  
She backed out of the room after depositing the files on the table. John looked back up into the fluorescent bulbs until his eyes began to water and he remembered why he was here. "Oh, science, right. Well, I was just wondering, since I've exhausted every effort so far, and I've always tried to do right by you, if you could do something for me."  
  
He paused, his eyes scanning the lab, white and sparkling, pristine since Sherlock left it last. John felt a chill run up his back. "Could you be wrong this time? Could you defy all your own rules and just...just not be solid, just long enough to-" His voice cracked and he swallowed hard, his hand fisted around the eyepiece of the microscope. He coughed and nodded to the empty room. "Yes. Just, yes? Please? Thanks."  
  
As he walked home, the rain climbing in intensity, paddling around his feet, he avoided the cracks in the pavement. Just in case.  
  
  
  
  
  
 **day 93**  
  
 _denial_  
  
  
"What are we going to do about these books? There's so many of them!"  
  
His fork hung inches from his face, the pasta wrapped around the prongs sliding off in slow motion. "Leave 'me, of course. What kind of question is that?"  
  
"Leave them?" Mrs. Hudson said, almost incredulously. "But why?"  
  
"Sherlock's going to wonder where they went when he comes back," John said, shoving the fork into his mouth. He shoveled another load onto his fork and brought it to his face before smiling and patting Mrs. Hudson on the hand. "You worry too much. He'll be back again, and I don't want to hear his whinging when he finds we've thrown out his stuff. He'll be insufferable."  
  
"But, John, dear-"  
  
"Now, now," he said, putting his fork on his plate and swallowing his last bite. He grabbed her hand between both of his. "Have faith, you. We'll see him again sure enough. Few weeks now, I suspect."  
  
He didn't miss the sidelong glance she gave him as they both turned their focus back to dinner. He didn't acknowledge it, either.  
  
  
  
  
  
 **day 106**  
  
 _acceptance_  
  
  
"My best friend--Sherlock Holmes--is dead."  
  
It felt like relief to finally say it, a boulder in his pocket now a tiny bit smaller, less weight on on his bones. It felt good to say it, even.  
  
"He's dead. Dead." A pause. "Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead."  
  
His therapist sat in stony silence, her pen hovering millimeters above her notepad, her face impassive, an infuriating blend of scrutiny and non judgmental professionalism.  
  
"Bought the farm. Kicked the bucket, crossed over. Bit the dust, keeled over, fed the worms. Is six feet under. Gone up to the spirit in the sky, or what have you." Her silence goaded him on. He scooted himself forward in his chair, his wrists at an uncomfortable angle on the armrests. "I feel bad for saying this. But I don't. Does that make sense?"  
  
She started to speak and he cut her off.  
  
"Of course it does. You get paid to say that it does." He felt a pang of something, the sensation of crow for every meal, but pushed it down and barreled on. "I can't wrap my head around it. Well, I can, I saw the grave and saw the body. But my fingers won't fit all the way around it."  
  
He grabbed his wrist, his thumb overlapping the nail of his middle finger. He held it out to her. "It needs to do this." He pulled apart his fingers, a space of about an inch between them. "but It does this. I can't close this gap. I need it closed."  
  
He moved his fingers fractionally closer together, his eyes on the space still left between them, hungry and desperate and that's settled. "Saying it got it to here."  
  
"You do realize-"  
  
Her voice yanked his gaze from his wrist, the gap between his fingers and his understanding, to her face.  
  
"-This is the most you've ever said to me?"  
  
The tops of his ears and the bridge of his nose burned hot and crimson, his urge and want to speak immediately stamped out. "Sorry."  
  
"No, this is good. It's a breakthrough."  
  
His palm toyed with the handle of his cane, rocking it back and forth against the chair. He shifted back, his spine pressed against the hard wood of the chair. He coughed into the stuffy silence that hung between them now. "Listen, I have, uh-a thing. A thing to go to. Rain check?"  
  
He was up and hobbling out the door before she could protest.  
  
  
  
  
  
 **day 152**  
  
 _anger_  
  
  
Nobody would take him, not even for a few months. Sarah had someone else living with her.   Lestrade didn't outright say no in order to save John a little face, but the end to his means was definitely a no.  He wasn't even going to bother with Harry or Mycroft.  
  
He was stuck.  
  
Mrs. Hudson had lowered the rent significantly to allow him to swing it by himself; she wouldn't admit it and hid it behind a mask of concern for John's otherwise impending homelessness, but he knew she was reluctant to see anyone but Sherlock in 221B.  
  
He wanted to feel grateful; he knew that he should. It was a flat he could barely afford with Sherlock, and now he could comfortably afford it alone and out of work on an Army pension. He should be kissing Mrs. Hudson's feet and offering to name his firstborn child after her for keeping him off the streets, for keeping him from the fate Veterans often had, one of begging and scraggly facial hair and urine-and-booze soaked clothing.  
  
But he wasn't grateful.  
  
He was angry.  
  
He was mad at Mrs. Hudson for being so nice to him. He was mad at himself for being sad, for not being able to get up and go to work like a normal human and instead staring at the ceiling for hours wondering if Sherlock had been onto something with the whole suicide thing. He hated himself for thinking things like that, for being angry with people that he needn't be angry with, and it all just made him compressed and tight, the veins in his neck rippling with fury.  
  
Most of all, he was mad at Sherlock.  
  
Late into the night, he'd pound out angry emails, never sending them, always embarrassed the next morning, always ashamed he'd had a pint too many and furiously composed letters that made the top of his head tingle all throughout the next day.  
  
 _Who the bloody hell do you think you are, leaving off like that?  
  
You selfish dick, I hope you know what's happened since you topped yourself off, let me tell you, it's been absolute shite.  
  
I loved you, you bastard.  
  
Yeah i said it, what does it matter now, youre fucking dead.  
  
Why? Why did you do it?  
  
I'm a doctor, i could've helped, why didn't you say anything, i thought we were friends.  
  
Thought we were friends  
  
we were friends  
  
were friends  
  
were _  
  
  
  
  
  
**day 219**  
  
 _depression_  
  
  
He had tried to leave once.  
  
He had ignored the exhausting, magnetic pull strung from the middle of his chest to the chair, the walls and counters and the seventeen stairs of the flat; he ignored it and stepped onto pavement in twinkling dusk. People hurried about him, quieting down as night began to drop closer and closer from the sky to the street. He took three steps in one direction and was hit by a memory, inconsequential and meaningless otherwise, but trapped in the orbit of the flat, it became magnified and teetered with meaning. He squeezed his eyes shut against it, tired of memory and analysis and the hours after feeling of _what did i miss?_.  
  
He pulled his foot back, shoving his hands into his pockets, and tried the other direction.  
  
He got halfway around the block before something hit him again, kids eating sweets on their front steps, giggling and waving as John passed. His heart smacked painfully against his sternum, tripping over itself and losing its rhythm. His knee surged in pain and he gritted his teeth against it, defiant, determined.  
  
He hurried back to the flat, his eyes down, his shoulders clipping young men and middle-aged women, his feet scuffling around small children and the wheels of strollers. He wrenched open the door, his mind crashing memory like tides and plates and hurricane winds onto the insides of his eyelids, movies he couldn't stop, movies he didn't want to see anymore.  
  
That was hours ago. He sat in his chair now, too tired to move, too exhausted to stop the constant loop of film that played on walls and crop-circled carpet, falling, falling, a dot on the skyline with a wet and sorry voice, and he rubbed a hand over his face, feeling ridiculous and stilted.  
  
He'd seen men die. He'd spent more time than he'd like to admit buried elbow deep in a boy's abdomen or chest or backside, everything depending on his steadiness, his ability to navigate the fibers of a being with finesse and grace. He'd had boys and men and innocent civilians die underneath his palms, their hearts stop in his hands, their guts give up as he put the last stitch in. He'd seen it before. It shouldn't be different. He'd seen their eyes, the blues and greens and browns and even greys, some he'd known from base, from school, from friends of friends. He wasn't detached, by any means.  
  
But at night, the disenchanted lullaby of Baker Street cooing, pushing against his skin and dragging the air from his lungs in deep and calming motions, the nightmares changed shape.  
  
They all started the same: desert sand, mortar fire, the solitary scream of a boy too young to die so far away from home. It shifted, then; John was busy, buried in bodies, shouting orders and sweating on his mask. A nurse pulled his hands out of his patient, saying _He's gone, Dr. Watson, he's gone_ , but he jerked his arm from her grip and squeezed the soldier's heart harder, tighter, almost pleading with it.  
  
"Please," she whimpered, eyes teary, voice shaking. "He's gone, let go."  
  
John pulled his hands from the open chest, his gloves caked in blood and rust. When he looked down at the boy's face, he saw Sherlock's face, eyes wide and glassy, mouth agape, the blood on his forehead and mouth like a dark, sinful stain against his paper-white skin.  
  
John woke himself up screaming.  
  
Sometimes he felt like he could sit for hours, never moving, his limbs heavy, sandbags on his chest with lap. He knew he had to get up, knew this would pass if he made it pass, but he almost ached with sadness, the marrow of his bones replaced with the worry and guilt he knew were useless feelings. His knees almost buckled under the weight of it.  
  
He had broken Sherlock's violin about a week past--he was angry and volatile then--but now he wished he'd left it alone. From the chair across the telly, he felt sentimental and nostalgic and  foolish. He wanted to fall into the cloak of The Soldier, and in some ways he had, speaking seldom, eyes ahead, back straight, biting back waves of anything that tried to wash up on him, but the cloak was small now, the sleeves short with his shoes left showing. He wasn't the John he'd been when he joined the Army, the one he'd been when left for Afghanistan, not even the crumpled, shock-worn version he'd been upon returning home. He felt different and the same all at once, clothes you knew fit you and then they didn't. He felt dusty with old, hopeless and left to wade it out, his mouth a hard, thin line and his feet tap-tapping against the carpet in erratic, wandering heartbreak beats.  
  
The smile face on the wall beamed down on him, a note posted and reposted and reposted again underneath it. _Take Responsibility_. He felt the urge to rip it down again, but just the thought sent spasms through his back and legs.  
  
"Mrs. Hudson?" He tried to yell, but his jaw creaked and dust caked his throat, making it powdery and soft, the dryness of his mouth absorbing the vibrations. He swallowed a chunk of dust and tried again. "Mrs. Hudson?"  
  
She popped out from the doorframe immediately and he realized she'd been watching him. He felt fire rise up in his chest, but it was quelched by her barely whispering voice, soft and hushed and brimming with something he couldn't name, a mix of pity, of understanding and concern. "John, dear, are you alright?"  
  
He tried to smile, knew he needed to smile for her, but found his lips were stuck in sadness. When he tried to thaw and stretch them, they formed a ghastly expression of almost menacing melancholy. He stopped trying to smile. "Can you do me a favor?"  
  
"Surely." There was no mistaking the excitement in her voice for anything other than what it was. The inflection at the end of the word, the slight pitch change noticeable even to John with his dull with humming mind, screamed out through the haze at him. She cared. She hurt, too. with the thought occurred to him, cutting through the fog: You aren't the only one in the Universe who lost Sherlock, you know.  
  
He wanted to snap at her earlier, to tell her he was just fine, thank you, he didn't need coddled, but he saw the dark in her eyes, the worry lining her face, and he knew she meant well. He smiled at her, a real smile or the best and most genuine one he could manage, and she walked over and planted a kiss on the crown on his head. "Could you-"  
  
"I'll get it for you."  
  
He pulled his coat tight around him with his free hand, no wind to block, no rain to shield; simply an act of habit, of protection and familiarity. He started down the street, sore and exhausted, always exhausted now, in his hand the address of his old therapist on a crumpled up piece of paper he'd retrieved from the bottom of his sock drawer.  
  
People parted ways for him, made room on the busy sidewalk, and he greeted them with curt, polite nods, his cane tap-tapping on the pavement beside him.  
  
  
  
  
  
 **day 367**  
  
 _acceptance_  
  
  
"It's been a yea-"  
  
Acceptance.  
  
He cleared his throat and started again.  "It's been a whole year since-"  
  
 _Acceptance.  
  
Acceptance._  
  
"I'm sorry, I can't do this."  He grabbed his coat and leaned on his cane as he walked through the door.  He put the flowers in the bins on his way out.  
 _  
Acceptance.  
  
Accep-_

 

 

 

 

_The End  
_


End file.
